«Sacrificial therapy. Letter from a prison in Minsk»

Andrej Dynko was arrested during the protests following the elections in Belarus. He was sentenced to prison allegedly for “hooliganism”. During his time in jail, Dynko wrote a letter reporting the situation in prisons, and managed to pass it to liberty. It informed about human rights abuses trying at the same time to figure out for himself as much as for the outside world the impact of recent events in Belarus. It was afterwards translated into 8 European languages, raising awareness and increasing solidarity with the Belarusian movement for democracy.

Andrej Dynko is the chief-editor of Nasha Niva weekly, Belarus, since 2000. He is Laureate of the Russian TV-Channel 1 Award "For journalistic courage and professionalism" (Russia, 2006) and "Oxfam Novib / PEN Freedom of Expression Award" (Netherlands, 2006). Born in 1974, he was a teacher at Minsk University and decided to move to journalism as a reaction to freedom of speech violations under the established authoritarian regime. Andrej is Vice-President of the Belarusian PEN-Center in 2002-2004 and a member of the Belarusian Association of Journalists council.